The banyan-based architectures are one type of space division packet switching. However, while the banyan-based switches have less crosspoints than other techniques, they do require a means of overcoming blocking, improving throughput and reducing cell loss. This is because of the contention that occurs at a crosspoint when two (or more) inputs want to access the same outlet. These `means` therefore further classify the banyan-based switches into either buffered-banyan or batcher-banyan architectures. The buffered banyan architectures have buffers at the points of contention while the batcher-banyan architectures minimise the contention by sorting the input cells. The buffered banyan architecture has been adopted to realise a switching fabric subsystem. However, these generally involved several levels of buffers at the input, output and intermediate switching stages.